The existing genetic diversity of California Condors, all of which are descended from just 14 individuals, is strikingly low. But were condors more genetically diverse before their 20th century population crash, or were they already, as one paleontologist put it in the 1940s, a Pleistocene relict with “one wing in the grave”? The researchers behind…
Invasive Plants Dye Woodpeckers Red
An ornithological mystery has been solved! Puzzling red feathers have been popping up in eastern North America’s “yellow-shafted” population of Northern Flickers, but they aren’t due to genes borrowed from their “red-shafted” cousins to the west, according to a new study inThe Auk: Ornithological Advances. Instead, the culprit is a pigment that the birds are…